DMAP Business Plan DRAFT

BUSINESS PLAN [in progress]
Working Product Title: DMAP - Dealer Marketing Automation
Platform
PREPARED BY:
MATTHEW STYERS
28 JUNE, 2015
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DMAP Business Plan
Executive Summary 3-------------------------------------------------------------------
What is DMAP 3------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current Status 4-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Key Challenges and Opportunities 5-------------------------------------------------------------------
General Company Description 7------------------------------------------------------
Mission Statement 7---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Company Goals & Objectives 7-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Business Philosophy 10-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Products & Services 11------------------------------------------------------------------
Core Application 11-------------------------------------------------------------------
Reporting Engine 12--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vehicle Management 13----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Payments and Invoicing 15------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Support 16--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apps/Modules 18---------------------------------------------------------------------
Inventory Syndication 18---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Multi-channel Campaign Manager 20-----------------------------------------------------------------
Audience Segmentation 21-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Organic Search Management 23------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email Marketing 25---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Direct Mail Marketing 27--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Social Media Management 28---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Specials and Incentives Management 30--------------------------------------------------------------
Future Development 32----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marketing Plan 35------------------------------------------------------------------------
Market Research 35---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Key Market Conditions 37-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Economics 39--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Industry Figures 39----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Operational Plan 43----------------------------------------------------------------------
Product Development 43---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Expansion Roadmap 46----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Growth and Scalability 47--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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DMAP Business Plan
Executive Summary
What is DMAP
DMAP is a web-based SaaS (Software as a Service) marketing automation platform designed for
automotive dealerships. It uses big data analysis and systematic actions to assist dealerships in tracking and
maximizing ROI on advertising spend. DMAP’s core object is to impact key points of the marketing and
sales funnel by:
• Forecasting lead and sale volumes
• Providing a single point of sale for all marketing channels
• Enhancing lead scoring and qualiﬁcation
• Analyzing and optimizing marketing spend
• Providing clear ROI on every advertising dollar
• Generating rich, insightful, and customizable reports
Additionally, DMAP improves sales funnel efﬁciency by providing a secondary layer of support to assist
dealership management in:
• Orchestrating dealer-to-consumer communication
• Managing workforce
• Training staff
• Disseminating internal communication
• Assessing performance
• Incentivizing and properly rewarding staff  
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DMAP Business Plan
Current Status
DMAP is currently pre-launch but has built the bulk of the components necessary to launch an initial
version of the product. Additionally, DMAP has signiﬁcant interest from potential clients, users, and
business partners. Speciﬁcally, the following modules (or sections of the platform) are complete and/or have
been planned and designed, and can be built and launched within the next 60 days:
• Core Application
• Vehicle Management System
• Craigslist Inventory Syndication
• Reporting Dashboard (beta)
• Direct Mail Automation 
Completing and launching these modules will allow DMAP to begin taking on users and generating revenue
and, furthermore, give the company leverage and proof-of-concept to begin re-opening conversations with
potential business partners.
Additionally, we’ve completed planning (or at least built into the overall project roadmap) for components
that will allows us inroads into the following revenue streams:
• PPC Management
• SEO Management
• Remarketing
• Email Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Online Reputation Management
• Social Media Management 
• Analytics & Tracking
• 3rd-party Leads
• Customer Support
• Multi-channel Campaigns
• Hybrid Mailers
• Graphic Design & Branding
• Data Cleansing
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DMAP Business Plan
Key Challenges and Opportunities
Automotive technology solutions traditionally lag years (and sometimes decades) behind other verticals’.
This lack of innovation is often attributed to demand-side shortages at the dealership level, but our initial1
market research, combined with shifting environmental factors within the industry, provide substantial
evidence that the exact opposite is very like true. Ultimately, DMAP is structured to take advantage of the
current market inefficiency, wherein demand for modern, enterprise-grade solutions that increase efficiency2
far outweighs supply.
Because DMAP is a largely untested product, extensive SWOT analysis on individual components and
scenarios is cumbersome because of the sheer number of unknown unknowns. That said, specific scenarios
that have been taken into account during planning and initial development are detailed throughout this
document and are summarized here. This is not intended to be a complete assessment, but instead should
only provide an quick high-level triage to frame the and understanding of the rest of the document.
Strengths
• Domain expertise in dealership and marketing
• Team-wide familiarity with product on all levels
• Positive feedback from dealers and agencies on prototype
• Interest from potential partners
Weaknesses
• Relative inexperience in SaaS market
• Industry is sometimes slow to adopt new technologies
• Dependent on outside systems’ cooperation
Opportunities
• Likely first to market
essentially, an industry-wide resistance to technology adaption due primarily to aging management and a myopic focus on short-1
term goals
or, experiences. Dealers are offered dozens of new “solutions” every year, but they universally have net-negative impact on2
efficiency and emotional state. During an informal interview about his current systems configuration, a sales manager at a large
dealership stated, “I get an app on my phone; I know how to use it right away. I’ve had the same CRM for 12 years, and I have no
[redacted] idea how to use it. I hate it. It doesn’t make any sense. I still keep this notepad of all our customers and what they want;
just too damn hard to figure out what it [the CRM] wants you to do.”
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DMAP Business Plan
• Signiﬁcantly more agile than established, outdated systems
• Introducing a new concept (platform-centric product) to market
• Industry history with high-value acquisitions
Threats
• Relatively short runway
• Aforementioned large, established systems with a history of bottlenecking access.
• General misunderstanding about the nature or purpose of the product 
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General Company Description
Mission Statement
DMAP is a software platform that helps car dealers manage and optimize their marketing budget.
Company Goals & Objectives
Goals
DMAP’s ﬁrst goal is simply to empower automotive dealerships’ management team to make better decisions.
We will achieve this goal by providing a suite of powerful, user-friendly software applications that
intelligently organize data, simplify reporting, and provide smart, actionable recommendations for
performance improvement. This suite of products, detailed at length herein, is delivered in a platform
ecosystem designed with the long-term goal of centralizing and streamlining ad-buying, lead acquisition,
data management and enrichment, and workforce management.
DMAP not an adaption or incremental improvement on a solution already available within the automotive
industry. Instead, DMAP provides a fundamentally new approach for handling dealership marketing by
rethinking the role software can play in assisting dealers with processes already in place and targeting key
pain points for dealer principals, managers, and sales staff.
DMAP’s second, more audacious goal is drastically alter the automotive retail culture and ultimately change
the dynamic of the relationship between automotive dealerships and the public at-large. As consumer
demand for a better car-buying experience reaches critical mass within the foreseeable future and innovators
like Tesla and TrueCar continue to tear away at outdated industry practices, consumer engagement strategy
will become an increasingly vital piece of management. By providing tools that allow dealers the increasingly
necessary components of a customer-centric marketing and communication strategy, DMAP ultimately
provides the foundation for the future of automotive retail management.
Finally, DMAP’s broadest, most basic goal is to build the best software available anywhere on the market by
developing agile teams of passionate individuals dedicated to continuous product iteration, innovative
adoption of new technologies, and exceptional, friendly customer support. This goal, though seemingly
philosophical in nature, is very speciﬁcally geared toward providing DMAP with strategic advantages in the
open market that will allow it to compete with and disrupt the immensely larger companies that currently
have a stranglehold on the marketplace.
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DMAP Business Plan
Supplementary, trivial goal: Matthew, one of the co-founders, would personally like to standardize a new
data protocol and notes that much of the truly abysmal system-system communication in the industry is due
solely to the lack of a robust API standard. The current industry standard, ADF-XML 1.0, was published in
1998 and has not been updated since 2000. ADF was engineered when R.Kelly and Celine Dion made3
chart-topping duets together and there was mainstream skepticism about the long-term viability of the4
Internet, so using it as the basic unit of communication inside modern systems is roughly the equivalent of
Russell Crowe’s performance in Les Misérables. Sure, it happened, but we’ll never really know at what cost.
This isn’t just a personal mission, however; it’s a direct appeal to the handful of brilliant developers currently
working in the industry. Building core product components specifically for developers provides 2 key pieces
of leverage:
• Outbound Access: Third-party integrations typically move slowly within the automotive industry, and
providers will sometimes limit or kill integrations for little or no reason. Developing a reputation as a
brand that cares about data and performance not as a competitive advantage but as part of a genuine
desire to make the industry better will earn DMAP developers incalculable good will with people who
matter a lot in determining when and how DMAP will interface with their core products.
• Inbound Interest: DMAP has an opportunity in the long run to become the first broad-scale
centralized platform for automotive dealers, which likely means creating an open API that allows
developers to hack on top of it and integrate their own apps. Planting the seeds for such a position
should start as early as possible, and the most tactically advantageous first step would be to plant the
central API component in as many other systems as possible.
Objectives
DMAP’s position as a platform provides it with the agility to adjust to the ebbs and flows of market demand
and even pivot away from major positions with relative ease. This flexibility is a net positive in the fact that
no single event can sink the entire project, but it also necessitates a high level of focus at the executive level
so as to avoid the very real possibility that DMAP could ultimately become a rudderless ship. With that in
mind, we’ve constructed the following long-term objectives to guide product and business development:
Not a typo. ADF is actually 17 years old. Documentation fossils are available at: http://www.entmerch.org/programsinitiatives/3
the-ema-metadata-structure/autolead_data_format.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPCwPe4Tk-44
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DMAP Business Plan
NOTE: Each of the products listed here are described in more detail in the following section, “4.x Products
and Services”.
Objective Target Window
Launch Q3 2015
2 available apps Q4 2015
Revenue-positive Q1 2016
60/50 account base Q1 0216
Agency whitelabel beta launch Q2 2016
Standalone VMS launch Q3 2016
Move to freemium model Q4 2016
$500k monthly monthly net revenue EOY 2017
Workforce Management component TBD
Loyalty and Retention component(s) TBD
Fixed-Ops component(s) TBD
Training/Certiﬁcation platform TBD
DMS TBD
CRM TBD
Predictive Data Modeling TBD
Open API TBD
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Business Philosophy
The universally accepted narrative that surrounds auto dealers on this front is that their employees are in
some way intellectually inferior, unable to bring order and efficiency into their workplace. In reality, though,
this narrative suffers from a confusion of cause and effect, and it is much more likely, we believe, that the
various factors surrounding and within dealerships creates an environment where inefficiency and poor
workmanship often go unchecked. The systems most dealers currently use aim to manage workforce through
regulation and control, typically producing different (though equally as costly) inefficiency and suffering
from low use rates. By contrast, DMAP is structured to provide value through centralization, automation,
and insight, thus empowering both management and workforce without adding steps or limitations to
dealers’ routines.
Fundamentally, DMAP revolves around a single key idea: there are, within automotive dealerships, vast
inefficiencies that, if properly identified and corrected, can vastly improve both total sales volume and
average lifetime customer value. Some of these inefficiencies are obvious to even the average consumer,
while others require more in-depth analysis of both process and results. Regardless of their cause or scope,
there is tremendous potential for a software solution that seamlessly integrates with dealers’ existing stacks
to capture wide a wide swath of the market and create upheaval in a market which currently has no
dominant offering and no real products to speak of.
Additionally, because the industry is dominated so heavily by agency providers, one of DMAP’s earliest
expanded product offerings will be an agency-facing version of the platform that enables those service
providers to run their own operations more efficiently while also providing vastly improved tracking and
insights to clients. These agency partnerships are a key entry point into the market, enabling rapid user
growth and access to already-established recurring revenue streams. Further, an agency solution enables
DMAP to reach a potentially alienated market in dealerships that have traditionally outsourced all of their
marketing and/or are reluctant to shift to a fully self-service model. To this end, DMAP can create a
secondary high-margin revenue stream through referrals and revenue-sharing or building a product-adjacent
DMAP Managed Services team.
With a platform as its core product offering, DMAP’s long-term outlook isn’t limited solely to expanding and
iterating on its initial marketing automation solution. As markets shift and dealership management continues
to evolve, there’s a wide range of possible paths to expansion, including:
• Fixed-ops (parts and service)
• Financing
• Inventory Acquisition and Planning
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Dealer Management System (DMS)
• Predictive Analytics 
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Products & Services
Core Application
Summary
As previously stated, DMAP is focused on performance and scalability. As a platform, the core build is
crucial not just for a single product but for an inﬁnite number of future uses. And because it’s an integration-
heavy product, DMAP is engineered to be used by other systems as much as (or more than) human users.
We’ve focused on creating an environment with a few limitations as possible, both for humans and machines.
Each of the core components of the ﬁrst MVP iteration of the platform (Reporting Engine, Vehicle
Management, Payments and Invoicing, and Support) are summarized below and will be built on the
following stack:
Development Stack Overview
Component Service
Servers Apache
Hosting Amazon AWS or Rackspace
Database Structure MySQL Cluster
Server-side code PHP
Client-side code Javascript
Javascript Library Jquery
Server-side Framework AngularJS
Web Services JSON
Front-end Framework Bootstrap
Payment Gateway Stripe (with option for PayPal)
Call-Tracking Twilio
iOS Dev Swift
Android Dev Java
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DMAP Business Plan
Reporting Engine
Summary
Because auto retailers emphasize oversight so heavily, dealer principals and managers rely heavily on
reporting to manage dealership operations. Most dealerships run these reports at the CRM level, which can
have serious unintended consequences. Because CRMs have extremely limited visibility on marketing data
(such as lead sourcing, customer information, customer intent, etc.), decision-makers are left to approximate
their best options, or worse – trust partial data .5
Clear and concise reporting on marketing performance and lead generation efforts is often at the top of
management’s wish list. Between the amount of money being spent on marketing and the general mistrust
embedded in many agency-dealer relationships, access to good, digestible data would have a huge impact at
most dealerships. And because DMAP is interested in the 30,000-ft view of marketing (rather than just the
channels one party is generating revenue from), the trust embedded in DMAP from reporting alone will
have a signiﬁcant impact on retention.
Analysis
Value Proposition accessibility, reliability, actionable insights
Key Features design, scheduling, customization
Stakeholders GM, GSM, Principal
Monetization Path Basic - free
Advanced - monthly fee
Obstacles CRM/DMS integrations
Metrics from some channels (i.e. Autotrader)
Main Competitors CRM Providers, Agencies
Status not started
Priority very high
Proﬁtability low revenue; high retention
for more, see appendix B on single-point sourcing vs. attribution modeling.5
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Vehicle Management
Summary
Inventory Management is a key component of every dealership’s infrastructure, and the antiquated systems
most dealerships are using do not have the functionality necessary properly market inventory. Most of these
systems were built a decade or more ago with the sole intention of warehousing vehicle data and pushing an
inventory feed once or twice per day to a dealership’s website.
We see inventory management as a possible entry point into the market, as it provides a low barrier to entry
and is almost universally overvalued in the marketplace. Dealership’s pay anywhere from $600 to $1500 per
month for inventory management. By simply offering a competitive product at a much more valuable price
point, we can gain access virtually any dealership’s inventory and then generate recurring revenue from
value-added services such as inventory syndication, pricing automation, design and ﬁnancing tools, and
multi-channel marketing campaigns.
Freemium Inventory Management
Long-term, we see the VMS as a potentially high-leverage entry point for new accounts. Once the platform
is launched and DMAP is prepped for rapid growth, one potential for rapid growth is to simply offer a free
VMS tool and allow dealerships to use the platform without a base licensing fee.
Most management-level staff use VMS tools several times per week, and at large dealerships where sales
managers handle most of the CRM-related tasks, GMs may access their VMS tool more often even than
their CRM. For DMAP, these routine visits mean continual exposure to apps and services, and with careful
UI design, a high likelihood of turning into a paid account.
The core challenge with this model will be creating an onboarding procedure with little-to-no human
intervention. Third-party systems (in this case, usually the DMS) don’t have authentication procedures, and
setup often requires either manually retrieving ftp credentials or making a phone call to the provider’s
support team. However, because there are no major providers in the space offering anything like this, the
high level of beneﬁt from both marketing and sales perspectives makes the idea worth serious consideration.
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DMAP Business Plan
Analysis
Value Proposition superior tool, better price point
Key Features syndication, incentives mgmt, speed/responsiveness, mobile availability
Stakeholders GM, GSM, Salesperson
Revenue Model
Basic - Free
Premium - Monthly, based on inventory
Obstacles manual onboarding, local pricing regulations
Main Competitors VMS providers
Status development - 80%, design - 10%
Priority mission-critical
Proﬁtability high
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Payments and Invoicing
Summary
Automated payments and invoicing are a key component of the platform’s scalability and product-oriented
market position. With that in mind, every component of DMAP is built with the ability to process payments
at its core. And while this feature should be an afterthought (as it is with most SaaS products), DMAP
would likely be the system in the market that features baked-in payments . We don’t anticipate this quirk6
causing major issues, but it’s certainly something we’re mindful of as we build the platform.7
We’ll likely use Stripe as the primary payment gateway, with an option for PayPal for dealerships that are
picky.8
Analysis
Value Proposition convenience, transparency
Key Features multiple account assignment, flexible permissions, approvals and notifications
Stakeholders GM, AP, CFO, Dealer Principal
Revenue Model --
Obstacles new model for most dealerships
Main Competitors --
Status not started
Priority very high
Profitability none
We’ve never encountered a system with baked-in billing, and that’s after research and/or using, you know, pretty much every6
system.
When building users and roles permissions, for example, ability to process a payment should be assignable at the user level.7
Additionally, because of the weird way that dealerships do their billing, we’ll have to allow for quite a bit of flexibility in how
billing is invoiced and processed.
Because of the sometimes-tenuous relationship between dealers and providers [everyone who’s been in business for very long8
has been burned at least once], some dealerships demand to use PayPal because they’ve been told it’s the only safe way to process
a credit card payment.
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DMAP Business Plan
Support
Summary
To understand DMAP’s support philosophy, it’s important to first have a grasp how things currently work
within the industry. Support is typically at or near the bottom of every provider’s priority list, and it’s fairly
evident from virtually every support staff’s performance. Even basic support requests sometimes take several
days to complete, and tickets are routinely dropped or left in a sort of apathy-fueled purgatory for weeks on9
end.
Beyond that, the very nature of some of the requests that have to go through support staff often border on
absurd. Basic settings updates (i.e. email changes, time zone config, etc.), access to reporting, user on and
off-boarding, and even password resets all require phone calls and sometimes several transfers to complete.
What’s particularly confounding is that this all takes place in an industry that operates at full throttle and
privileges expediency over almost anything else. Fast support is critical to management staff who are
routinely overloaded, so much so that GMs will sometimes cancel longstanding accounts on impulse over
particularly egregious failures in support. The flip-side, of course, is that given how much frustration10
support can cause, the few solutions that do offer solid support typically earn unparalleled loyalty.
With that in mind, we see support not as required overhead for operating a SaaS system but as the central
component to growth and retention. And because we do genuinely care about our product and the people
who use it, we’ve extended the idea of what we consider “support” to every aspect of the company. A few
specific ways we prioritize support include:
• Video and screen-share support for every user. Because DMAP’s users may be new to this type of
product, face-to-face support should be embedded to a) reassure new users that help is a click away
[increasing session length and frequency], b) walk users through processes they’re used to calling tech
support for [decreasing frequency of calls in the long run], and c) adds to the personality of the
system [encouraging retention and increasing average billing]
it’s probably not coincidental that worst offenders of criminally poor support are those owned by a media conglomerate whose9
largest division is a cable company.
The importance of support expedience cannot be understated. Dealership staff will sometimes spiral into fits of rage over10
support. Yelling, foul language, escalation to management, and hurled/broken office equipment are not uncommon responses.
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DMAP Business Plan
• Customer service training for every hire. It’s important that every employee at every level of the
company know how to handle support requests and have a user-centric mentality, even if his/her job
isn’t typically user-facing.
• Virtually non-existent support policies. As an enterprise product with a somewhat limited market size,
every DMAP user is critical to success and carries a potentially massive LCV, so support staff should
feel empowered to do whatever it takes to rectify an issue and/or retain an account.
Analysis
Value Proposition ease of use
Key Features
video, screen-sharing, chat, phone/click-
to-call
Stakeholders literally everyone
Revenue Model --
Obstacles initially, labor overhead. long-term, none.
Main Competitors none
Status not developed
Proﬁtability (see entire summary)
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Apps/Modules
Inventory Syndication
Summary
Inventory syndication is a core component of vehicle management and has long been considered a required
component of operating even a small dealership. Dealerships may opt out of certain syndication channels
based on cost, local market usage, and perceived effectiveness, but for the most part, dealerships want their
vehicles in as many places as possible and may have 50 or more outbound VMS feeds.
Because inventory feeds are typically more accessible than any other type of data dealerships store,
inventory syndication offers both the lowest barrier to entry and the shortest route to revenue of any system.
Additionally, because most VMS tools are ancient relics of a different technological eon, most dealers – and
in particular those who understand the value of the feature – aren’t particularly loyal to their current
provider, offering an opportunity to pick up new accounts quickly. That, combined with the relatively low
risk for the dealer [inventory feeds are fairly simple to switch from their perspective, requiring little
intervention until something goes awry], make Inventory Syndication the ideal ﬁrst module to build into
DMAP.
Channels
The DMAP vehicle database can syndicate vehicle records in virtually any format on any schedule. By
building a simple mapping into into the admin interface, we’ve made it relatively easy for support staff to
create and save new syndication templates and even customize mappings for individual dealers , thus11
lowering the overhead required to expand the service and minimizing developer involvement in relatively
non-technical tasks.
DMAP will launch with the following integration presets and pricing structure:
a 100% necessary feature. Car dealers are nothing if not insistent on ruining the integrity of their data. Because they’re used to11
systems that barely work, dealerships routinely use “custom” data mappings, so it’s not uncommon, for example, to see a feed
where MSRP is listed in a column called ‘selling price’ and the vehicle’s actual selling price to be listed in ‘Option 12C’ or some
other place that makes no sense.
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DMAP Business Plan
Analysis
Channel Integration Type Pricing Structure
• Craigslist • xml feed • per post, cost + margin
• Ebay • RESTful API • per listing, cost + margin
• Autotrader • on-demand ftp • included
• Cars.com • scheduled ftp • included
• CarFax • scheduled ftp • included
• TrueCar • RESTful API • included
Value Proposition better, more flexible, lower price point
Key Features posting customization/filtering, reporting
Stakeholders GM, GSM
Revenue Model
Basic Feeds - free
Premium Feeds - per post, based on volume
Obstacles none
Main Competitors Dominion Dealer Solutions, VMS Providers
Status Development - 90%, Design - 70%
Profitability moderate
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Multi-channel Campaign Manager
Summary
DMAP will provide an innovative set of tools geared toward creating, executing,and analyzing multi-
channel marketing campaigns. Most dealers currently use different providers for each marketing channel,
meaning that messaging – and often even basic branding – are inconsistent from one medium to the next,
and potentially high-value prospects frequently receive mixed messaging or are missed entirely.
Additionally, because available campaign management tools exist on a one-size-fits-all style of management
that greatly limits the flexibility of campaigns, they are wholly inadequate for handling the level of data
available to the DMAP user. Centralizing every outbound marketing channel and providing ready-made
templates for different styles of outbound campaigns along with the ability to customize the contact and
follow-up schedule of any campaign.
Broad-scale and system-based tasks – like emails – can be handled automatically or pushed to a BDC agent
for manual completion, while manual actions – like phone calls – can be scheduled and the delegated at the
outset of a campaign in order to more effectively manage the time spent on that campaign. Similarly, the
Campaign Manager will monitor and report agents’ time and productivity, offering guidance for
improvement and alerting managers when their intervention may be necessary.
Additionally, this centralization streamlines the approval process for both the dealer’s legal counsel and for
co-op approval. Notifications can be sent when pieces are ready for approval, and standard disclaimers
stored on the platform can be tokenized for replication.
Analysis
Value Proposition unified messaging, smoother setup, reduced waste
Key Features templates, follow-up scheduling, ROI monitor
Stakeholders GM, GSM, Legal, BDC staff
Revenue Model flat fee for campaigns + margin on pieces
Obstacles labor overhead, integrations
Main Competitors agencies, single-point marketing providers
Status Development - 15%, Design - not started
Priority medium
Profitability high
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DMAP Business Plan
Audience Segmentation
Summary
DMAP allows dealers to scrub and append their existing customers, providing a cleaner experience both in
their existing CRMs and within the DMAP platform, which provides a simple interface that allows a
manager to create tailored prospect segments that uniquely fit the message of a campaign. CRMs have
traditionally provided little functionality specific to these campaigns and have focused on outdated mass
marketing methods, but DMAP will allow managers to provide relevant messaging to targeted segments of
customers based on demographic, financial, and behavioral information unique to that audience.This means
that, for example, email campaigns could an individual in good credit standing would never receive a Special
Finance offer, and a 45-year-old mother of three would not receive an offer to test drive a sports car .12
These data become especially powerful when mapped against internal sales and service records. Take, for
example, Hyundai owners, who are highly brand-loyal have an unusually short buying cycle. Imagine that a
dealer has a shipment of 20 new Sonata Hybrids in transit. DMAP could detect the shipment from the
inventory feed, create a segment of everyone who’s purchased a new sedan in the last 24 months, and send a
pre-made email to the list the day before it arrives, driving traffic to the dealership and pushing rapid sales.
Or, for even further customization, DMAP can sub-divide the list by the customer’s APR and loan standing.
Customers with high interest rates and a year or more of good standing are very likely to qualify or lower
rates and would receive a “Lower Your Payments” variant of the email, while customers with low interest
rates and good standing would receive an offer for the manufacturer’s 0% APR incentive they’re likely to
qualify for.13
Additionally, dealers will be able to acquire lists of customers from outside data partners for use in multi-
channel campaigns, thus streamlining the currently nightmarish process of conquest campaign setup. And
because data are stored locally and conversions are tracked during the campaign, dealers receive greater
transparency on segment quality and new insights into campaign effectiveness. Furthermore, the Campaign
unless, of course, she returned ‘1’ for ‘is adrenaline junkie’, which is an actual available segmentation criterium. The most12
delightful variable of the 1,000+ available: ‘is cat lover’.
This is a variant of an actual campaign we ran during initial testing. The emails received a 31% open rate, and the campaign13
netted 13 sales across 2,000 sends. ROI on front-end net alone (not including financing revenue, which is typically the largest
profit center) calculated at ~7000%.
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DMAP Business Plan
Manager will prevent any single customer from receiving overlapping messaging or being targeted with
multiple offers simultaneously. This will ensure the long-term viability of existing customers by preventing
fatigue and frustration often caused by overlapping and irrelevant messaging.
Analysis
Value Proposition
simplified management, transparency,
improved quality
Key Features custom segmentation, behavioral filtering
Stakeholders agency partners, GMs, owners
Revenue Model per-record scrub + append
Obstacles
FCRA compliance, UI complexity, DB
behaviors
Main Competitors industry-agnostic solutions
Priority medium
Profitability medium
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Organic Search Management
Summary
SEO has become one of the foremost concerns for automotive dealers, particularly at the ownership level,
largely due to the efforts of agencies and advisory groups who made it their top target for inside sales. As
you can imagine, though, dealers’ extremely limited knowledge, combined with the myopic focus of many of
the agencies, has also made it one of the areas of greatest scrutiny. The combination of SEO’s necessarily
long-term perspective, often qualitative results, and the abysmal quality of most dealerships’ sites combine to
make it a high-risk endeavor for any provider.
That said, DMAP is intentionally feature-poor in traditional SEO management, but where we do see
tremendous value is in monitoring and making recommendations on existing site quality and SEO tactics as
a function of both the reporting tool and the content marketing app. By plugging in to a web crawler with an
API and pairing the resulting data with metrics from Google’s Analytics and Webmaster Tools APIs, we can
provide dealers with insights into keyword rankings, organic visits and conversions, and site errors. For
dealerships who routinely pay $2,000 or more per month for a marketing channel of which they’re highly
skeptical, this simple utility would provide mountains of value.
Additionally, because 70%+ of dealers use one of two manufacturer-mandated website providers, neither of
which is even close to adequate in SEO, adding some additional functionality that provides platform-speciﬁc
data would prove valuable for agencies and independent website providers, both of whom are in a constant
battle to justify the need for dealers to carry a custom site on top of the one already mandated by the
manufacturer.
Ultimately, though, the vast majority of DMAP’s SEO Monitoring boils down to a single metric: Organic
ROI. Currently, organic search conversions are the most tragic victim of single-point sourcing errors, and
dealers routinely make awful decisions that affect the long-term health of their dealerships simply because
they do not understand the value of organic search.
!23

DMAP Business Plan
Analysis
Value Proposition new insights, accountability
Key Features
Organic ROI measurement, site error
reporting, SEO progress reporting
Stakeholders agencies, niche site providers, owners
Revenue Model ﬂat fee, tiered by keyword volume
Obstacles
setup, complexity in tracking organic
conversions for dealers who use prefab
sites
Main Competitors
industry-agnostic tools, generally
despondent attitudes toward SEO.
Priority not high
Proﬁtability unknown
!24

Email Marketing
Summary
Most every automotive dealer does email marketing because they know they’re supposed to and most
manufacturers offer some level of co-op support for it, but because the medium is relatively low-cost, it’s also
perceived as low-value. Campaigns are sent sporadically, typically as an afterthought or out of desperation in
an attempt to drum up sales at the end of the month. And, like virtually all other dealer marketing collateral,
these neglected emails are rarely designed well and almost never engineered properly to drive conversions .14
DMAP rectifies those issues by providing well-designed email templates and the campaign structure to
launch effective email marketing with only minimal, basic human intervention. Additionally, DMAP
provides strategic advancements for email marketing practices most dealers simply don’t have access to. The
basic feature set for email marketing includes:
• responsive email design
• conversion-tracking
• email triggers
• automatic filtering to prevent supersaturation
While these features seem basic from an outside perspective , the vast majority of dealership staffs don’t15
carry the expertise to properly handle data or execute campaigns, nor do most marketing agencies. The
simple convenience of setup and execution of one-off campaigns along with “set it and forget it” triggered
campaigns will provide more than sufficient value to grow a substantial user base.
If you’re currently on a dealership’s mailing list, you know what I’m talking about.14
they’re available literally for free in any Mailchimp account.15
!25

DMAP Business Plan
Analysis
Value Proposition convenience, improved performance, happier customers
Key Features (see summary)
Stakeholders GSMs, sales staff, customers
Revenue Model flat fee + per-send margin
Obstacles UI simplification, template library creation
Main Competitors single-point providers
Status not developed, design - 20%
Priority medium
Profitability medium-high
!26

Direct Mail Marketing
Summary
While direct ail may seem like a relic of a bygone era [and there’s evidence that it may have a expiration date
in the not-too-distant future], there are two simple arguments that make it an essential element of DMAP:
• Dealers love direct mail, and they’ll continue doing it at least until manufacturers remove it from co-
op programs.
• When done properly, certain direct mail campaigns can be fairly effective.
By embedding direct mail into multi-channel campaigns and combining savvy targeting with simple features
like individual redemption codes and firm offers of credit (based on appended credit data) that act as
effective credibility indicators, DMAP can provide a direct mail experience light years ahead of anything
available on the market.
Initial exploration into partnerships with direct mail printing and fulfillment providers have proven fruitful,
and there’s a clear path toward fully automated direct mail ordering within the platform in which DMAP
can generate revenue by providing ready-made mailer templates and brokering transactions between dealers
and providers.
Analysis
Value Proposition simplified setup, reduced waste, improved results
Key Features ready-made templates, advanced targeting, streamlined approval
Stakeholders GMs, GSMs, direct mail providers, agencies
Revenue Model
Campaign - flat fee
Print/fulfillment - per-send margin
Segmentation - upgrade for “premium” segments
Obstacles third-party integrations, DB actions
Main Competitors direct mail providers, time
Priority medium-high
Profitability very high
!27

DMAP Business Plan
Social Media Management
Summary
Social media is perhaps the single most difficult marketing channel for most dealers. Attracting an audience
organically is difficult enough, but coming up with content to keep that audience engaged (or at least not
super annoyed) is simply an impossible mountain for most dealerships to climb. As such, most dealerships
pay inordinately high fees to agencies to manage posting and engagement.
The obvious downside to this model is quality control. Agencies aren’t at the dealership every day, and
they’re more than likely posting low-quality content that users register as spam. The nature of this
arrangement also means that dealerships’ comments and reviews (which in most cases are complaint-related)
are responded to by dealership personnel either slowly or not at all.
DMAP rectifies this situation with a simple social media management app for dealers and agencies that:
• Uses the Buffer SDKs to format and syndicate content
• Recommends relevant content to dealerships
• Acts a “moderator” and notifies key personnel of issues
• Uses Wishpond’s API to create and manage giveaways16
• Uses platform-specific APIs to manage social advertising
• Creates reports on high-level metrics
Dealers LOVE giveaways.16
!28

DMAP Business Plan
Analysis
Value Proposition quality control, alerts, improved reporting
Key Features (see summary)
Stakeholders GMs, agencies, owners, the receptionist who currently manages social media
Revenue Model
App - flat fee
Contests - flat fee
ads - margin on spend
Obstacles SM API limitations, development overhead
Main Competitors agencies, industry-agnostic platforms, apathy
Priority medium
Profitability moderate
!29

Specials and Incentives Management
Summary
Because auto retailers trade in what is essentially a commoditized good, sales and incentives are vital to17
dealership health. Even at the manufacturer level, incentives are carefully calculated to match demand, and
the relative success of an incentive program has a fairly high correlation to overall sales trends.
At the dealership level, there are two main pain points that DMAP’s specials and incentives management
app solves:
• Proper implementation of manufacturer incentives, including:
⁃ calculation in vehicle pricing
⁃ communication with sales staff
• Creation, implementation, and promotion of dealership-level specials and incentives
By integrating with ChromeData’s API, DMAP is able to identify available incentives at the vehicle level
and create “pricing rules” for vehicles, factoring all variables into price adjustment and allowing
customization on how pricing is displayed.
For dealership incentives, dealers can choose from pre-fab specials available within the system or create
their own. DMAP offers the same level of ﬂexibility in creating pricing rules for these vehicles and stacking
them with manufacturer offerings. Once created, these specials (and even manufacturer incentives) can be
widgetized and dropped into any marketing collateral, embedded into any website, or even syndicated with
social media content. DMAP can even use an incentive’s metadata to create Paid Search ad groups and text
and banner ads.
or at least perceived to be vital. The actual degree of vitality is up for debate.17
!30

DMAP Business Plan
Analysis
Value Proposition competitive pricing, regulatory/OEM compliance
Key Features Automated manufacturer incentive import, custom specials creator
Stakeholders GSMs, sales staff, OEMs
Revenue Model
manufacturer incentives - per-record fee
dealer incentives - ﬂat fee, tiered by volume
Obstacles disclaimer management, local regulatory compliance
Main Competitors existing VMS systems
Priority medium
Proﬁtability high (at scale)
!31

Future Development
The components and apps detailed thus far are those which are a definite part of DMAP’s development
roadmap and have enough demand to safely develop with a low assumption of risk. DMAP is structured for
a low-resistance market entry and rapid user growth, but there a whole host of other compatible markets
that DMAP could potentially enter with an established user base. Some of these modules are on hold
because of a significant barrier to entry or risk of a high level of resistance; others carry a risk of competing
too directly with an established provider’s core product offering, just compromising the viability of the
platform as a whole.
These components for which we see a possible future are listed below ascending order or approximate
difficult, along with a one-sentence summary of the component:
Website Platform
Though already complete and implemented, a website platform proved a difficult entry point due to high
levels of resistance at the dealership level, a crowded (and OEM-controlled) market, and relatively low
margin. Websites could be implemented in the future in conjunction with an agency provider, but the more
profitable play would likely be a relationship/close integration with an established independent provider.
Content Marketing
Highly compatible with current offerings and relatively simple to outsource, Content Marketing seems like a
relatively smart addition to the platform, but our initial research has shown that it’s a difficult value
proposition to communicate to most dealers. However, it’s a definite candidate for addition to DMAP’s
agency-facing version.
Budget Management
The long-term vision for DMAP’s budget manager is that will analyze market variables and make
recommendations for budget optimization. Eventually, DMAP would even be able to go on “autopilot” and
automatically make adjustments. However, the sheer complexity of the algorithms involved and the
relatively advanced state it would have to achieve to provide value make short-term development infeasible.
In the long run, though, it’s a high priority, as it basically achieves automated inside sales.
!32

DMAP Business Plan
Workforce Management
A child-app of the Campaign Manager, the workforce manager automates the process of creating,
delegating, and reporting on dealership tasks (campaign follow-up, inventory photography, etc.) that can be
delegated across parts or all of the staff. On hold for now due to possible CRM dependencies that need to be
resolved, and because of the high overhead involved in testing and development.
Loyalty and Retention
Loyalty & Retention components would likely be among the most profitable for dealers, but interest in the
concept was surprisingly low during initial market research. The most likely explanation is that most of the
market simply isn’t ready for the product, as it’s myopically focused on driving new sales.
Reputation Management
Obviously a major concern for auto retailers, an automated reputation management tool would likely have
almost universal interest, but review and comment dashboards don’t support many industry-specific sites,
and creating an in-house tool carries high developmental overhead. Definitely a possibility for a second
phase of development, though.
Fixed Ops
Fixed Ops (parts & service) tools are few and far between, and there are some obvious entry points for
DMAP. However, FO is typical in its own silo on both the dealer and provider sides and would ultimately
detract from DMAP’s core focus. Once established though, FO apps built on the DMAP platform would
have a ton of potential.
Training and Certifications
Training at dealerships in typically non-existent, and other than OEM certifications, there are few industry
standards for certification, and staff are promoted based solely on sales numbers or some sort of political
decision. Creating certification and training courses would garner interest from sales staff who want to
advance their careers and would go along way to establish DMAP’s authority. However, the difficulty of
building courses and establishing certifications makes the project infeasible in the short run.
!33

CRM
Existing CRMs universally revolve around of the lead as the primary unit of measurement, tying the
customer to the lead only as a secondary attribute. In this way, these systems are more “Lead Relationship
Managers” than Customer Relationship Managers. This often overlooked detail has had massive
implications on the culture of dealerships, from the way individual customers are treated to the way inbound
leads and outbound campaigns are managed as a whole.
DMAP’s structure emphasizes the automation and simplification of administrative tasks, which drastically
shifts the focus of the employee back to the customer. No other tool on the market approaches the lead/
customer relationship in this way, giving DMAP a distinct functional advantage that could easily be
leveraged into credible threat to existing CRMs with the addition just a handful of components. However,
until DMAP has an established user base, giving any indication toward this move is essentially playing with
fire, and the system relies heavily on integration with CRMs that could easily revoke access if they feel
threatened.
DMS
If there’s a single component of the automotive ERP stream where DMAP could truly make the most noise,
it’s the DMS. Currently available products are abysmal and show no signs of improvement, but dealerships18
almost never switch DMS tools due to the complexity of doing so and the deep-seeded fear associated with
losing data during the transfer or worse, having to learn how to use a different, awful system.
At some point in the next few years, dealerships may begin reaching their frustration tipping point en masse ,
but until indicators of that shift begin to emerge, it simply doesn’t make sense to begin work on such a vast
product.
how abysmal? The largest DMS tool, which controls well over half of the US market, announced their first ‘GUI’ (they called18
it that in the press release)… 3 years ago. Until 2012, it was a DOS-based system. And as you might suspect, a company that
successfully has successfully managed to sell product nicknamed ‘the blue screen’ well into the 21st century did not do a great job
of constructing a UI.
!34

DMAP Business Plan
Marketing Plan
Market Research
Overview
Like many other startups, DMAP originated out of a desire to solve a known and prevalent problem and
in some sense was conceptualized and reﬁned as a result of years of mostly fruitless market research.
Countless hours of digging for solutions, analyzing existing products, and using available software
alongside dealers ultimately led to the central hypothesis behind DMAP:
Automotive dealerships need and want a fundamentally better way to manage and optimize their marketing efforts.
Despite the obvious potential for a successful product that solved this central problem in any of a
multitude of possible ways, the following variables were ﬁrst analyzed to assess the viability of such a
product:
• Environmental: What macro-level trends are in play?
• Comparable: Has anyone else done something like this?
• Competitive: Is there already something on the market?
• Political : How many toes will we be stepping on, and whose?19
• Anecdotal: What do people think of the idea?
These factors, among many others, provided the initial guidance for DMAP. While there’s certainly multiple
levels of complexity (detailed on the pages that follow) involved in releasing, marketing, and growing a
While this may seem like a weird question to ask, it’s a major factor in the auto industry. As corporations have centralized,19
power has consolidated, creating a virtual hegemony within the industry. The competitive landscape simply isn’t diverse enough to
stroll through the door “guns out”.
!35

DMAP Business Plan
project of this magnitude within a relatively sequestered industry, closely analyzing these factors helped
spawn a nuanced and somewhat unconventional approach to automotive software.
Ultimately, our conclusion is fairly straightforward: the landscape in its current state is largely fractured and
dysfunctional. Thus, DMAP is intended to look and feel substantially different than anything an automotive
dealer has ever used. The de facto “best practices” that govern existing software are woefully inadequate, and
companies that make that software, by virtue of chronically neglecting their platforms and users, have
created the space in which DMAP can thrive. Under the hood, DMAP is designed for performance and
scalability, with ﬂexible data-handling and robust customization. On the surface, DMAP’s core foci are
simplicity and intuition.
!36

Key Market Conditions
Before diving into more quantitative market analysis, it’s important to grasp some of the key environmental
factors that will likely have an impact on DMAP’s growth. Though many of these positions are more
qualitative in nature, they tend toward objective discernment from observed behavior rather than solely
speculative of possible future outcomes:
Supply-Side Shortage
Automotive technology solutions traditionally lag years (and sometimes decades) behind other verticals’.
This lack of innovation is often attributed to demand-side shortages at the dealership level, but our initial20
market research, combined with shifting environmental factors within the industry, provide substantial
evidence that the exact opposite is very like true. Ultimately, DMAP is structured to take advantage of the
current market inefficiency, wherein demand for modern, enterprise-grade solutions that increase21
efficiency far outweighs supply.
Top-Down Change in Marketing Focus
Typically, substantial portions of dealers’ marketing budgets are determined by its manufacturer’s
advertising co-op allotment. Over the last few years, manufacturers have begun using this leverage to prod22
dealers toward modernizing their marketing strategies by reapportioning funds to privilege digital media
such as paid search, social media, and email campaigns. The magnitude and pace of these shifts varies widely
amongst manufacturers, but most have increased funds allotted to digital adversing by 100% or more.23
essentially, an industry-wide resistance to technology adaption due primarily to aging management and a myopic focus on20
short-term goals
or, experiences. Dealers are offered dozens of new “solutions” every year, but they universally have net-negative impact on21
efficiency and emotional state. During an informal interview about his current systems configuration, a sales manager at a large
dealership stated, “I get an app on my phone; I know how to use it right away. I’ve had the same CRM for 12 years, and I have no
[redacted] idea how to use it. I hate it. It doesn’t make any sense. I still keep this notepad of all our customers and what they want;
just too damn hard to figure out what it [the CRM] wants you to do.”
“co-op” is the standard term for the manufacturer’s advertising incentive program. Dealerships receive cash to put toward22
advertising based on performance, or manufacturer’s will match a dealership’s spend (at 1:1) ,up to a predetermined figure, for
money spent on specific marketing campaigns.
Most notably, in 2014 Ford doubled their digital co-op allotment to a then-unprecedented 50% share. (see http://23
www.autonews.com/article/20140113/RETAIL/301139986/ford-co-op-program-pushes-more-digital-ads)
!37

DMAP Business Plan
Dealerships’ budgets have responded in-turn, and PPC, SEO, and Social Media budgets have largely
overtaken traditional channels.
Rapidly Shifting Anchor Points for User Satisfaction
This is an effect that can observed by virtually any user of any technology: exceptional and surprising
moments are only exceptional and surprising once. Then they become the new standard. Specifically, though
the industry has been institutionally slow to adopt new technology, dealership staff – and increasingly,
management – will still inevitably become less satisfied as the software available to them at work becomes
relatively less functional than software they encounter elsewhere.
Acquisition-Heavy Market
Over the past decade, the largest automotive software and service providers have spun into an acquisition
frenzy. Virtually every piece of software that gain any level of momentum is quickly snatched up, often at
surprisingly high valuations. While there’s debate over whether the motives for these acquisitions is
defensive (dominant enterprises would rather simply buy out their competitors than face them) or offensive
(perhaps part of a larger strategic play to fold an emerging technology into the existing product offering),
the end result for successful startups is typically the same: a clear exit strategy and high-value multiplier on
investors’ ROI.
Immobile Giants
The major corporations in the industry have largely reacted as expected, becoming increasingly immobile
and doing little to improve their product offering in any reasonable timeframe. But unlike those in
comparable scenarios, automotive software providers seem to simply not know how to revamp their
platforms, as software updates are almost universally underwhelming, both functionally and aesthetically,
and are often a significant step backward in terms of usability and cohesion.
!38

Economics
Industry Figures
Note: All industry ﬁgures are sourced from NADA’s 2014 Data Summary, which gathers information from manufacturers.
Thus, the information here primarily revolves around the sale of new cars. However, enough used car data is available to
make fairly accurate estimates.
The US auto industry has experienced several years of growth following the economic crisis and subsequent
stimulus program. 2014 marked the 4th consecutive year of growth, with the following totals for all US
dealerships:
!39
9%
11%
15%
16%
23%
26%
Internet TV
Radio Newspaper
Direct Mail Other
Average Dealership Spend By Channel, 2014
MEDIUM AVERAGE SPEND
Internet $130,324
TV $114,145
Radio $78,125
Newspaper $73,771
Direct Mail $53,040
Other $45,371
TOTAL $494,776

DMAP Business Plan
Though the industry has experienced ups and downs over the last several years, advertising spend has
remained relatively stable, and the total number of new dealerships typically climbs at a steady rate of about
1%. [A net total of 212 franchise dealerships opened in 2014 for a growth rate of 1.2%]
The Average Dealership
Below is a breakdown of total advertising spend at a typical US dealership. These numbers have grown at a
steady 2-4% clip over the past several years, and only cost per acquisition has fluctuated significantly, due to
increased total sales volume.
Automotive dealers’ advertising budgets rarely fluctuate by more than a few percentage points, but where
the largest changes have taken place over the last several years is in the distribution of that spend.
All US Franchise Dealerships
2014 Total
Total Rooftops 16,396
Total New Units Sold 16,445,188
Total Revenue $806,112,996,308
Total Advertising Spend $8,112,347,296
Total Manufacturer Co-op $1,886,425,384
Total Advertising Spend $9,998,772,680
Average Dealership Sales Figures, 2014
2014 TOTAL
Total Revenue $49,165,223
Total Expenses $5,365,451
Dealer Advertising Spend $494,776
Total Manufacturer Co-op $115,054
Total Advertising Spend $609,830
Total New Units Sold 1003
AVERAGE COST PER ACQUISITION $608
!40

Barriers to Entry
The automotive industry has seen traditionally seen such slow rates of innovation that there’s always some
intrinsic risk with introducing a fundamentally new technology. Beyond that embedded factor, we see the
following as the two most possible barriers to entry and our current plan to overcome them:
Slow Rate of Adoption
There’s a possibility that dealership staff may just take awhile to grasp the concept of the system. The
industry is so embedded in an agency-centric model that a software solution may not resonate the way we
hope it will. To account for this possibility, we’re emphasizing familiarity and simplicity in the UI design so
that the ﬁrst time a dealer sees the product or uses the demo, it feels like other products they’ve used.
Additionally, creating an agency-facing model provides an extra bit of leverage, as dealers will still be
exposed to pieces of the platform, but the existing partnership with the agency can act as a sort of
handshake.
Inadequate Support From Dependent Technologies
Currently, a handful of software solutions (mentioned throughout the product descriptions), particularly at
the CRM and DMS levels, act as a sort of hegemon, exerting extreme control over dealerships’ mobility by
limiting access to data and heavily gatekeeping direct access to the platform. Fortunately, high demand for
more friendly policies, as well as increasing competition, have started pushing these companies toward more
dealer-centric practices. DMAP is entering the market at a favorable time, but there’s still some risk
involved. To mitigate risk and ensure we’re fully compatible with every major system, we’ve made our
integration components as ﬂexible as possible. Additionally, we’ve strategically steered the product roadmap
to include as few components as possible that overlap with dependent systems’ products, minimizing the
possibility that DMAP will be perceived as a threat.
!42

Operational Plan
Product Development
Because the scope of the entire DMAP model is so vast, we’re developing and launching the product in
phases under an MVP (minimum viable product) model, which is commonly used by startups to rapidly
launch software and then improve it through continuous iteration.
MVP, or minimum viable product , is a product development technique that focuses on shipping a24
"barebones" or feature-poor version of a product in order to minimize risk, shorten development cycles, and
solicit user feedback in the early stages of product development. It's a very commonly used practice in agile
product development and has tremendous upside potential, especially for SaaS and enterprise web apps.
Because software development revolves around the distribution of non-rivalrous goods, and software can
“shipped” digitally, this agile method provides a virtually instantaneous feedback loop, dramatically
shortening the time it takes to find out what features users like and don’t like, and what new or expanded
features would be most popular.
There are numerous arguments for and against building MVPs, but in DMAP's case, an MVP makes a lot of
sense for a few key reasons.
An MVP is the shortest path to revenue
Simply put, DMAP needs to start making money. Because we're primarily bootstrapped (with only minimal
funding), we don't have the luxury of doing several rounds of extensive development before we launch the
first version of the product. Additionally, because we had good buzz at NADA, we need to deliver something
tangible before those relationships go stale.
Expectations are not high.
Considering what's currently available, DMAP's MVP has potential to perform extremely well. If we spend
too much time over-developing the first version of the software, we'll end up just wasting time and
continuing to improve on a product that's sufficient for early adopters to begin using.
Do not take this argument to mean the product shouldn't be thoroughly developed. DMAP's end goal is to
be a 10x or greater improvement on anything available on the market. The value of the company hinges on
for more on MVPs, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product24
!43

DMAP Business Plan
the gap between DMAP and everyone else. The statement here is simply an observation that an MVP could
begin driving revenue that would ultimately speed up further development.
The DMAP ecosystem lends itself to the MVP model.
That's a bit of a mouthful, but all it really means is that because DMAP is a large platform made up of a
bunch of smaller modules, it's relatively safe to launch a product with only a few of them and then
continually add new modules and features as they're ready.
below, you'll find a rough outline of the projects that need to be completed for an MVP release. This diagram
isn't intended to be exact or scientific; it's just a visual representation of roughly what needs to be completed.
The obvious downside of an MVP model is the simple fact that shipping a smaller or less robust product
decreases the initial revenue flow. However, a multitude of case studies suggest that this model, because it
shortens the runaway to user growth, actually creates a higher long-term revenue ceiling. But regardless of
long-term potential, the short-term circumstances make an MVP launch the only viable survival scenario for
DMAP.
Though agile development and growth are ideal, there is still the simple consideration of operational cost,
which, for at least the first 6-9 months after launch, will likely exceed revenues. In order to mend the gap,
pay staff salaries, and keep the company afloat, DMAP will operate as a marketing agency and gradually
transition into a product-centric model. The business plan for the agency component is summarized in a
second document. By simply operating the agency at 80% workload, enough labor capital will be freed up to
achieve sustained growth. Having the same team work on the agency and the product will allow greater
flexibility in project and product management, and the unified goals of all involved will create an increased
willingness to build DMAP beyond work hours.
!44

DMAP Business Plan
MVP Development Model
!
!45

Expansion Roadmap
It should also be noted that the particular build and strategy being employed here (namely, inventory-based
marketing and direct mail) have intentionally been prioritized because of key factors that could have a
massive impact on DMAP’s revenue during and after launch, including:
Co-op dollars: Manufacturers allot dealerships monthly budgets allocated for franchise-specific marketing
campaigns, with the stipulation that the manufacturer earmark the funds for certain advertising media, and
that the material be approved by the manufacturer. So, every franchise dealership in the US has a monthly
budget (typically $4,000-$8,000, depending on regional sales ranking) allocated specifically for direct mail.
This holds true for virtually every marketing channel (including PPC and SEO in some cases), but the
systematic and one-off nature of direct mail campaigns makes it an easy point of entry for dealerships.
Similarly, Craigslist, though not typically subsidized by co-op dollars, is relatively straightforward to set up
and requires little-to-no oversight once implemented. 
Agency partnerships: Because most dealerships run their substantial budgets through agencies of some kind
or another, deploying tools that help specifically help agencies operate more efficiently and will attract users
at the agency level will create leverage for exponential user growth. 
The broadest possible implementation of this plan, as it pertains to automotive dealerships, involves a
complex, multifunctional core platform that offers products in each of these areas:
!
Though scope of this product offering far exceeds the initial product launch (detailed below in “Operational
Plan”, it’s important to understand that the core platform and initial product, despite their inherent
simplicity, should be treated as part of a much larger puzzle that encompasses each of these verticals. 
!46

DMAP Business Plan
Growth and Scalability
Like any other software model, DMAP is constructed with the potential to grow quickly and take on a large
number of users without drastically increasing overhead. This leverage, commonly known as an economy of
scale, is what will ultimately determine the product’s long-term market cap, so it must be carefully
considered from the initial outset of the project. In order to make growth this feasible, DMAP’s core
application will include the following components:
• Self-service onboarding: users will be able to sign themselves up online without any human
intervention from DMAP staff. 
• Automated payments: uses will be able to attach a credit card to their account and will be invoiced
and charged automatically based on usage. 
• Elastic, cloud-based servers: DMAP will run on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which will
automatically scale with user growth to ensure that the application can handle its load without
wasting money on unused server space. 
In combination, these elements provide the elements necessary to create and exponential growth model
wherein DMAP’s revenue can begin to increase at a rate of approximately 10x expenses, eventually reaching
an optimal level of 20-40x expenses as the product offering continues to diversify and per-user revenue
increases.
!47

DMAP Business Plan DRAFT

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